Tag: foetal development

Categories : Ethics and Law Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

High Court Wrong about Law on Foetuses under 26 Weeks, Concourt Rules

On By ModernMedia
Gavel
Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

The Constitutional Court has declined to confirm the constitutional invalidity of sections of the Births and Deaths Registration Act. This comes after the Pretoria High Court found that the Act denied parents the right to bury the remains of a foetus less than 26-weeks.

The application was brought by The Voice of the Unborn Baby NPC and the Catholic Archdiocese of Durban against the ministers of Home Affairs and Health.

The applicants argued that the Act was “insensitive, hurtful and disrespectful” as it only allows for a death certificate to be issued in “stillborn” cases when the foetus is more than 26-weeks.

High Court Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi agreed and ruled that sections of the Act are unconstitutional on the basis it “deemed a foetus less than 26-weeks to be medical waste that must be incinerated”.

However, the Constitutional Court, in a unanimous judgment, said the judge was wrong. Acting Judge Pula Tlaletsi said the applicants had submitted that the provisions of the Act had the effect that no burial order could be issued for foetuses lost through miscarriage before the 26-week mark, and that the regulations only made provision for the burial of corpses and human remains, but not foetal remains.

“While it may be true, as the applicants argued, that throughout the years the practice has been to deny parents this right in the apparent belief that this is what the law provides, matters not. The Act contains no such prohibition,” Judge Tlaletsi said.

“The relevant sections cannot be declared inconsistent with the Constitution because of such omission … the Act does not stand in the way of that burial,” he said, noting that the Act only regulated the burial of “dead human bodies or still-born children”.

The Judge said that the court was not in a position to grant the relief.

Read the judgment here

The question as to what medical staff at public hospitals must do if parents expressed the wish to bury or cremate pre-viable foetal remains was not clear, he said.

“Such a burial or cremation would no doubt require the cooperation of healthcare professionals and public hospitals would be expected to allocate the necessary resources.

“Because of the way the case was pleaded, we do not have the necessary evidence to evaluate considerations relating to how hospitals would manage this … There may be other restrictions, for example, limitations imposed by municipal regulations (regarding cemeteries and crematoriums).”

The Catholic Church, arguing that its members held “sincere religious beliefs” that they become parents from the moment of conception, said the burial right should also extend to lost pregnancies “due to human intervention”, including termination of pregnancies.

But two amici in the case — the Women’s Legal Centre Trust and the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition — said this would have a profound impact on the termination of pregnancy services offered to women, and the attached confidentiality.

This burden, they said, would lead to a decrease in facilities offering termination and a diminution of sexual and reproductive rights.

However, the apex court did not comment on this.

By Tania Broughton

Republished from GroundUp under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Source: GroundUp

Categories : NeurologyTags :

Foetal Brain Development Mapped in Great Detail

On By ModernMedia
Image source: Pixabay

Researchers at Karolinska Institute have charted a highly detailed molecular atlas of the foetal development of the brain.

The study, published in Nature, made use of single-cell technology which was performed on mice. In this way, researchers have identified almost 800 different cells that are active during foetal development – far more than previously known.

“Brain development is well described and the main cell types are known. What is new about our atlas is the high resolution and detail,” said Sten Linnarsson, head of research and professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet.

In their work, the researchers followed the brain development of the mice from day seven, when the brain is just forming, to the end of pregnancy on day 18.

Using single-cell technology, they were able to identify the detailed composition of the brain during foetal development: what cell types exist, how many cells of each type, and how this changes at the various stages of development.

The researchers also studied gene activity in each individual cell, classifying cells according to these activity patterns.

Creating a molecular atlas

The result is a molecular atlas that accurately illustrates how all cells in the brain develop from the early embryo. The atlas shows, for example, the way early neural stem cells first increase and then decrease in number, being replaced by transitional forms in several waves that eventually mature into ready-made neurons.

The researchers also demonstrated how early stem cell lines branch much like a family tree, giving rise to several different types of mature cells. The next step is mapping out atlases of the human brain, both in adults and during foetal development.

“Atlases like this are of great importance for research into the brain, both to understand brain function and its diseases. Cells are the body’s basic building blocks and the body’s diseases are always expressed in specific cells. Genes that cause serious diseases are found in all of the body’s cells, but they cause disease only in specific cells in the brain,” said Prof Linnarsson.

Source: Karolinska Institute

Journal information: “Molecular Architecture of the Developing Mouse Brain”, Gioele La Manno, et al. Nature, online 28 July 2021, doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03775-x.